Monday 10 March 2014

The Grand Budapest Hotel & VisitBritain's Guide to the Foreign Guest

The United Kingdom is worldwide tourist destination number eight (via). VisitBritain, a merger between the British Tourist Authority and the English Tourism Council, was established in 2003 in order to market Britain internationally and to develop the visitor economy (via). When VisitBritain published a guidance for the tourism industry (how to treat foreign guests in hotels) reactions soon followed. At the beginning of this year, various internet sources quoted the dos and don'ts that were listed in VisitBritain's report ... with some sarcastic remarks.



The dos comprise:
- Understand that Indians are amiable but have a tendency to change their minds quite frequently.
- Deal promptly with any complaint from German or Austrian tourists, who can be straightforward and demanding to the point of seeming rude and aggressive.
- Ensure tourists from Russia - a tall nation - are housed in rooms with hight ceilings and doorways. (via)



The don'ts comprise:
- Exchange a smile or make eye contact with anyone from France who you do not know.
- Ask superstitious people from Hong Kong to sleep in a historic property or a four-poster bed because they associate them with ghostly encounters.
- Describe a visitor from Canada as American. (via)



Photos from Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel (via and via and via)

10 comments:

  1. The whole thing was like a bad joke. Anyways, loved GBH!!!

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  2. Ha, this was big in January. Well, there is no such thing like tourism sciences, isn't it? Just tourism. :-)

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  3. "Don't make eye contact with anyone from France." What, please, why? Hahahahaha. That's crazy stuff!

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  4. Scary, I would say :-)

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  5. It's indeed clever and hilarious, combining the VB guidebook and Budapest Hotel screen grabs!

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    1. It really is, isn't it? I btw saw the film the other day. Fiennes was a blast as Gustave H.

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  6. For a second, I felt a twinge of panic - I couldn't find your comments, neither old nor new ones. The layout seems to have changed moving all comments from the top to the bottom... What a pity, your feedback is such an integral part of the blog. Many thanks Derek, Wim, Karen, Kenneth, Macy, Abbie, Tim, and John. And yes, Grand Budapest Hotel is wonderful :-)

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    1. Thanks and no worries, Laura. The comments section was easy to find. :-)

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